


a feeling in my chest

by offbrandgizmo



Category: The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Nightmares, OT3 is Endgame as Hell, Pining, Post-The Hanged Man, Pre-OT3, but there's more fluff than angst I swear, it's a gratuitous tag but relevant, just a little, look Brand says it's not even there but he's mostly wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23065579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offbrandgizmo/pseuds/offbrandgizmo
Summary: Brandon Saint John doesn’t mean to be so abrasive.Okay, so maybe he does. But sue him, he’s got all the non-abrasive quota he needs back at the Enclave, Sun Estate, and at Half House before that. Before that, too, but before that was a blur of pain and panic, and before the pain and panic, a kiss and a push, a splash, and nothing.
Relationships: Background, Brandon Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas, Rune Saint John/Brandon Saint John, Rune Saint John/Brandon Saint John/Addam Saint Nicholas, implied, implied eventual
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	a feeling in my chest

**Author's Note:**

> heed the tags: there is a brief anxiety attack that results from an offscreen nightmare  
> also obv spoilers
> 
> title from for the best by gregory and the hawk

There are lips pressed against his neck; a swipe of tongue, the brush of pointed fingernails along his bicep. The touch lights him up all over and he tilts his head back willfully. The stranger—tall, fey, blush-spattered cheeks—leans into him, doing things with their tongue that he thinks must involve some kind of magic. Shape-shifting, probably.

It feels _amazing._ His hands find purchase, one in his hair as he sighs, the other spread across the stranger’s bare skin. He threads his fingers underneath the part of their shirt that isn’t hanging from their shoulder, skin on skin on skin on skin. He sighs, again, as the stranger’s teeth brush lightly underneath his chin, and he belatedly registers the hint of a groan past his lips.

And then the moment, pulled taut, is snapped as the stranger runs teeth along his pulse point. He shoves them off with a growl, hand around their wrist keeping them at arm’s length. He gives them a long stare before pushing them back. And he leaves.

* * *

Brandon Saint John doesn’t mean to be so abrasive.

Okay, so maybe he does. But sue him, he’s got all the non-abrasive quota he needs back at the Enclave, Sun Estate, and at Half House before that. Before that, too, but before that was a blur of pain and panic, and before the pain and panic, a kiss and a push, a splash, and nothing.

He _usually_ doesn’t let himself wonder what might have happened if he’d chosen _not_ to push Rune into the pool. Except that he does, all the time, but it’s only ever when he’s away from Rune. Because when he’s there, with him, no other thought but _presence_ ever crosses his mind.

None of it changes, or will ever change, the fact that all the non-abrasive he has is reserved exclusively for Rune. And, he concedes, the kids, even though all of that’s still new. And sure, Addam gets a little of it, too—not that Brand will _ever_ be in the business of admitting that to anyone. It’s for Rune’s sake, anyway. That’s... what he tells himself. Especially when he’s walking away from the Green Docks on unsuccessful nights like these.

He’s not _pining._ He’d first heard the term from Anna, something about Max and Quinn.

(‘It’s not pining if it’s not romantic!’ That was Max.

‘Bet?’ Anna. ‘Max and Quinn, sitting in a tree—’

Brand poked his head in the door, saw Anna’s smirk from behind Max’s hand—Max had all but tackled her—and retreated immediately.)

But really, he’s not pining. He’s pretty sure Rune knows, or at least he should suspect. And even if he was pining, it’d have to be a pretty severe case, because it’s only been, what, 25, 26, 20- _something_ years, and that’s kind of a long time to be in love, he thinks. Probably too long when it’s mostly unrequited. He knows Rune _loves_ him. He just knows it isn’t like that. It’s not the same as it is with Addam. He gets that; it’s fine.

But the knowing doesn’t prevent his emotions occasionally running haywire. He has ways of dealing with it, and sometimes those ways don’t work. Sometimes he just needs Rune, even if it’s creeping back to Half House—or, now, the Enclave—and pretending he can hear his boy’s heartbeat through the walls.

Sometimes he swears he really _can._

Tonight, he slumps down in his bed, in the room next to Rune’s. They’re at the Enclave, where they’re staying during the interim as they work on reclaiming Sun Estate, because it’s taking a lot of damn time and a lot of damn manpower, and there’s no way they’re not keeping the Dawncreeks close. Half House could never house them all.

Still, he misses his basement. The servants here keep cleaning up his _artful_ mess.

He pulls his shirt off, throws it across the room. Sighs. Drapes an arm over his eyes, and thinks of Rune, wrapped in Addam’s arms. The thought warms him like he’s got arms around him, too. He feels ridiculous thinking like that, but nothing makes him feel safer than knowing _Rune_ is safe. Addam would do damn near anything to keep Rune safe. Brand is... appreciative.

He’s not sure when he falls asleep. He’d still been a little drunk on fey and alcohol, and it made everything a little hazy. But he knows that he wakes just as light filters into the room, and that his chest is tight with panic.

His first thought is _fuck, shit, Rune!_ before he realises that it’s him. He’d already jumped from the bed, making for the door, but as he registers his shallow breathing and racing heart, he steps back and sits rigid on the bed. He rests his elbows on his thighs, burying his face in his hands.

He had a nightmare, he thinks. It comes back to him in pieces as his rubs sensation into his cheeks. Rune, aching across their bond. The Tower’s voice, screaming in his head, the feeling of a fist around his heart, almost ripping it out of his damn chest. _FIND HIM NOW, BRANDON._ Rune, unconscious and not fucking breathing. The feeling of a rib cracking under his hands, Rune, _fuck,_ fucking breathing again, barely, pushing him away, Anna throwing him back down the hallway; Anna, a child, doing what he should have been able to do—what he wouldn’t have been able to do if she hadn’t been there. _Saving him._

He’s sweating _cold._ He shivers, rubbing his arms, now, trying to bring feeling back into the present, because _fuck_ being in the past. He briefly registers the stirring of their bond, confusion blurring into concern, and he stands, pulls on the shirt from last night, and leaves the room. He tries not to slam the door open, and he’s pretty sure he succeeds, barely, but the world is rushing in his ears, pulling at him aimlessly and suffocating him.

Not _really,_ though. It’s all in his head. He’s breathing fine and walking level. But inside it’s all damned chaos.

He hears the door open behind him, and he knows it’s Rune, can feel him reaching out to touch him through their bond, but he keeps walking. Rune will follow, if he’s concerned enough, or he’ll understand that this is something Brand needs to let abate on his own, and he’ll go back to bed.

He doesn’t go back to bed. Just follows Brand as he makes his way out a side door and down to the shoreline. He stops a few paces behind Brand when they’re right where the tide can’t reach the sand.

Rune gives him a while. Brand’s not sure how long, exactly, it takes for the tide to sequester the panic, but it does. Bit by bit, moment by moment, breath by deeper breath.

‘What is it?’ Rune says, finally. ‘Don’t try to hide from me. I know this isn’t the first time. We do this together.’ He’s an echo of Brand two decades in the past, and Brand knows he knows it. And he’s right, of course. This is, maybe, the third time he’s had these nightmares. Of Rune, _not-fucking-breathing-godsdamnit-breathe—_

Brand closes his eyes to the horizon, sunspots dancing white behind his eyelids, and inhales through his nose. The air, salt and seaweed, stings a little, and it’s not unwelcome. He feels Rune’s hand on his shoulder on the exhale. It helps and hurts. He turns, Rune’s hand dropping to his side, and they’re close enough for him to smell Rune, now, too. He smells like sleep and Addam’s cologne, and that’s somehow calming, too.

‘I...’ He knows what he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it without sounding desolate and unaware, so he changes tactics, closing his eyes.

‘It’s... you. Back at New Saints, when he—’ he opens his eyes when Rune’s hand falls back to his shoulder. Seeing him, feeling him, being this close to him, it’s all the only place he feels completely settled. And he can speak.

‘When the Hanged Man cursed you, and the Tower, when he—’ Rune nods. ‘When I found you, you were... Gods, Rune, you were almost dead. You weren’t breathing and even when you were, I couldn’t _fucking_ help you.’ It comes out _seething,_ chills him more than he expected it to. He has to take a moment to recollect, and he continues when Rune makes to speak, cutting him off. ‘I couldn’t save you, when a _child_ could, when it’s supposed to be my job, when it’s the _one_ thing I’m supposed to—’

The anger that comes across the bond is sharp, suspending his words before any more can leave him. And then Rune’s speaking.

‘Anna is... she’s something else entirely, Brand. She could see what even _I_ couldn’t see, and it’s no measure of you that you couldn’t break the curse of an Arcana. He used a mass sigil, Brand. Did I tell you that?’

And that’s... that’s news to Brand. He shakes his head. As if he wasn’t already in awe of Anna.

Rune’s frowning up at him. ‘And I’m okay, now. I’m really, really okay.’

His grip on Brand’s shoulder tightens, as if to prove the point, but based on the ebb of worry and anxiety coming across the bond, Brand isn’t sure Rune is aware of what he’s doing. But it’s just the right side of too-tight, and Brand leans into it as subtly as he can, a minute exhale parting his lips.

They’re silent for a long time, just there, all tousled by the breeze and still, until Brand finally nods. ‘Okay,’ he says.

He expects Rune to move, to drop his hand and step back, but he just stays like that. Then, ‘There’s something else. Brand,’ there’s a warning in his name, and a prod across the bond, ‘I know there’s something else.’

And this is. This is not how it’s supposed to go. It’s not supposed to happen at all, really. But Brand’s feeling a little bit _cracked,_ and terrifyingly, he realises, it must show.

‘I...’ Not for the first time, Brand feels lost. Completely lost. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. And it pours out in words that aren’t quite right. ‘It’s the way Addam gets to keep you safe.’

It’s not really what he means, but it’s an easy way out, so he continues. ‘Because,’ his teeth latch onto the words, as if trying to clamp them back and prevent them, but they come, ‘I want it to be me, too. Keeping you safe, like that.’

And it hurts. The words settle solid in his gut, weight freezing him in place. He knows he couldn’t move even if he tried and it terrifies him. But he’ll give Rune the easy way out too. He can choose to ignore the subtext and everything will be fine and they can pretend and go on and he’ll stop having nightmares and being terrified and frantic when he wakes up and has to reach for the bond instead of Rune, beside him, to make sure he’s still alive.

But the silence persists, thin, then thinner. Stretched and frail.

It’s a little like how Brand feels. Or... a lot. With everything that’s happened, he just. These past months, he’s _failed_ Rune. More than once. He’s failed his damn Companion, his friend, the man he—he’s failed. He’s failing. Gods fucking damnit, he—

He doesn’t look at Rune. He wants to punch himself in the face, letting all this surface. He’s pissed at himself, and it all gathers up in a bundle of shame, the urge to be selfish, and an abrasive irritation that scathes him. There might be a little self-hatred there, but he feels that and shoves it down, way down somewhere further than his stomach, maybe to the soles of his feet, so he can crush it all beneath his weight, because Rune hates that the most, and while Brand can’t stifle everything, he can at least stop them from entering into that cycle of self-hatred and guilt, self-hatred and guilt, self-hatred and _completely undeserved_ guilt, all over again.

‘Brand,’ Rune says. And it’s—well, it’s _all_ he says, and that makes Brand feel something else, again, because there’s way too much in one-and-a-half syllables and it’s dangerously close to undoing him.

He feels things, across the bond, and they’re hard to decipher in between all of his own blackening emotions. Maybe... something like sympathy? Rune wouldn’t pity him, never, but sympathy isn’t something he wants, either, and suddenly the amalgamation of feeling includes sadness. And the sadness gets amplified and ricochets between them, ping-ponging strong-weak-strong-lasting and then _snapped,_ because there’s a hand on Brand’s cheek and it leaves no more room for sadness.

Warmth blooms, spreads outwards from the contact and settles all around them, and for a moment it’s like the world is almost _sparkling._ And it’s so ridiculous and the _warm_ is so close to so many other things that Brand meets Rune’s eyes with a smile he didn’t even know he had. He knows he must look dopey and ridiculous but so many things are so ridiculous right now and his eyes feel almost wet, somehow, and it all fades into inconsequence.

Rune’s free hand comes up and rests against Brand’s other cheek. ‘Can I?’

And Brand feels like his whole face might be on literal fire, but it’s barely a question, and Brand leans in before Rune can say anything else.

Their lips are pressed together, touching, covering, maybe even caressing, and it doesn’t feel special in any _new_ way. It’s a little clumsy and a little moist and they’re just a little bit thirteen again, and it feels so pitifully _simple,_ like this is just the crashing together of all their closeness, just another wave breaking between them—or, no. Around them. With them. _Them._ Gods, none of it fucking matters, it’s just _them._

Brand sets his arms steady around Rune’s neck, pushing deeper into the closeness, and it’s just _everything_ right in every way. Every inch that’s no longer between them evaporated for the best. Gone, one with thin, distant air and salt spray, hidden as sand among soft white sand. Insignificant.

They only come apart when they have to, breathing shallowly into each other’s parted lips and staring, way too close and altogether only close enough. Rune’s hands leave Brand’s cheeks, flattening out against his chest instead. Brand’s arms go lax around Rune’s neck, and he’s just smiling down at the scion—nope, Brand, not anymore—the _Arcana_ in front of him. The fucking Arcana. He’s so fucking proud.

‘You’re so—’ and suddenly he’s just utterly lost. Suddenly all the words are gone and he’s... Gods, he has nothing. _Impressive,_ he thinks he was going to say, but it’s not quite right. Stunning? Breathtaking? Spectacular? Grand?

Rune cocks an eyebrow. ‘I’m so _what?’_ He almost sounds wary, guarded, but before Brand can settle him with a quip, he’s suddenly head-over-heels— _almost_ literally—in the ocean. He’s on his ass, in the fucking ocean, still fully-fucking-clothed.

‘Retribution,’ Rune says, full of pride, and he’s grinning like a Cheshire cat with no care in the world.

Brand swallows back a surprised sound. ‘Are you twelve?’ he asks, but he’s staring up at Rune and he knows his eyes must be wide but he can’t help it because Rune’s being framed by the sun and gods, he’s going to— ‘Really, are you?’ he says, ‘because that was—’ but then he’s being _kissed_ again, and he feels terrifyingly real and really close to crying.

And since Rune _clearly_ doesn’t care about his clothes right now—he’s got one knee in the water anyway—Brand wraps his arms around him again and flips them, still kissing, as he shoves Rune into the water on his back. He breaks the kiss and stands, taking a few steps back as Rune scrambles to his feet in that clumsy-but-efficient way of his, spluttering as water drips from his hair.

The irritation seeps across the bond, but it’s mixed up with all the joy and warmth and _playful._ For a moment, Brand is sure Rune is going to charge at him and turn it into an actual play-fight, but then the glee in his eyes sobers a little. Before Brand can even begin to worry, there’s a rush of full-bodied _love_ across the bond. Love, and love, and love, and love, and love, and love, and love. _Endless._ He has to raise a hand and cover his eyes from the force of it, and a sound nearly breaks its way out of his throat.

Not a moment later, Rune’s hands are on him. There’s one on his shoulder and another in his hair, gentle and warm and solid and godsdamn _safe._

‘You know I love you, right?’ Rune’s saying, but Brand is almost gone on the ferocity of everything between them. And he says it again, all earnest and emphatic, ‘I love you, Brandon Saint John,’ and then just, ‘I love you,’ and Brand’s smiling as Rune coaxes the hand away from his face, Rune’s smile paired with teary eyes.

‘Love you,’ Brand says, but he has to clear his throat because he’s all rough and choked. ‘Always have, obviously.’

Rune’s laugh is whole and _sweet._ Gods, it’s _sweet._ And that _really_ makes Brand feel juvenile, so much so that he punches Rune in the arm, hard enough for him to bend over and curse, then punch him back, harder, and then it’s a damn play-fight anyway, but he thinks their bond might be singing, somehow.

And when Rune tackles him to the ground and they end up with sand in their hair, the dust of it sticking to their wet clothes, there are tears at the corners of Rune’s eyes and he’s laughing, and there’s no one but Rune to see Brand cry, just a little, so no one can hold it against him.

Because even sun-soaked sand has never felt this warm, and with his arms wrapped around Rune, with his safety and his reason to be safe all held, _safe, gods, safe,_ together, Brand has never felt so close to home.

**Author's Note:**

> I headcanon that Addam is watching them from a balcony (does the Enclave have balconies? surely) and his heart is full and warm.
> 
> And now I have blurry vision and can't tell if these words are good or not so hopefully they're a'ight because I've tHROWN THEM INTO THE VOID NOW HERE U GO HAVE THEM  
> FIFTH TTS FIC HELL YEAH  
> MORE TALLASMEN (thx Vivi for the shipname and the inspiration, <3)
> 
> ~~i might write a spiritual sequel idk i'm terrified of characterising addam~~


End file.
